Differences Between GA4 and Universal Analytics –

Almost 30 million websites use to understand the behavior of users, with the aim of creating a better experience for it. It is a widely used tool that a few months ago announced the launch of the latest version of Google Analytics, which is not an update. Do you want to know what are the differences between GA4 and Universal Analytics?

In we are here to help you and that is why we are going to tell you everything about the new Google Analytics 4so that you do not have any problem when working with it, since we know that when Google announced his migration to Google Analytics 4 (GA4)marketers and website owners around the world began to worry about the new way to monitor the behavior of their customers.

What is Google Analytics?

First of all, we are going to start by telling you what it is Google Analytics. Google Analytics It gives you the free tools you need to analyze your business data from a single place and be able to make more informed decisions. You can access exclusive statistics and take advantage of its machine learning technology to get the most out of its data. This is the definition that analytics itself gives us about the tool. For those who have not understood, Google Analytics It is a data collection tool for your website. That is, through some parameters you will be able to know data such as from where they search for your web page, through which device they access your website and even which are the most visited pages.

These are highly valuable data when making a marketing strategy for your business. Right now there are two versions of Google Analytics, Universal and GA4. The main difference between and Google Analytics 4 is that this first is based on the display of pages and sessions, now GA4 focuses on events. This change arises since today not all Internet traffic comes from web pages, but also from mobile apps. In all of these types of content, events allow us to more effectively measure the data collected.

Google Analytics 4 vs Universal Analytics: main differences

In fact, Google Analytics 4 it is nothing new. It is the property of Google Analytics “Web+App”which has now been renamed Google Analytics 4. If in your case you already have a property of the type GA4 (Web+App), you don’t have to worry about anything. You will only have to observe the new reports presented by this property and adapt to them. For you to understand better, from we tell you the main differences of Google Analytics 4 and Universal Analytics.

data models

One of the main differences between these two platforms is that Google Analytics 4 focuses on a model based on events and parameters, while Universal Analytics It is based on a data model based on sessions and page views.

This means that all data sent to Google Analytics 4 have adopted the Firebase data model in the form of events, and each event is distinguished by the event_name parameter, with additional parameters to describe the event. Furthermore, it is important to note that Google Analytics 4 (GA4) it is not an update to Universal Analytics (UA).

sessions

The session metrics GA4 are derived from the “session_start” event, which is automatically collected when a user uses an application or website. Also, the duration of the session is calculated based on the time interval between the first event and the last event of the session.

page views

The page views in Universal Analytics are converted to page_view events on the properties of Google Analytics 4. This means that when we configure GA4the page_view event is fired automatically from the gtag.js code snippet or the Google Analytics 4 configuration code in GTM.

events

The events of Google Analytics they are automatically registered from gtag or gtm settings.

GA4 Changes from Universal Analytics

Privacy consent mode

Due to stricter regulations like GDPR and CCPA, many companies have to sacrifice data to respect those they choose not to track. Since Google has introduced a consent model that allows you to do a certain level of tracking while still achieving compliance.

Is that Google it won’t help locate or identify users, but you’ll still be able to report content, conversions, and attribution.

data limits

In Universal Analyticseach tracking event is sent to Google’s servers as a separate image beacon.

An eCommerce site that sends all product page views, interactions, and viewing data can put a heavy load on Google’s servers, which is why Google has historically imposed restrictions on access to the free version of Google Analytics.

Advantages of Google Analytics 4 or GA4

• If your project has both a website and an app, now with GA4 you can have a unified measurement of what happens in both ways.
• Many more options to explore data and analyze individual user behaviors.
• All data can be exported to Big Query in a few steps.
• New predictive metrics: probability that a user converts or stops visiting us.
• Better ways to measure the degree of engagement or user interaction.
• You will be able to measure custom events more easily.
• GA4 has its own debugging tool, which allows you to find out why a certain conversion is sometimes not measured.

From we help you

Now that you know the difference between GA4 and Universal Analytics It is time to get down to work and continue measuring the user experience of your website. If you have doubts, in What we know how to help you. ¡ with us!